


Doghouse

by dirtdove



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M, Katara at her worst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-10-13 02:01:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20574611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirtdove/pseuds/dirtdove
Summary: Katara and Zuko share a mistake in common.Takes place at the Western Air temple; post Boiling Rock, pre TSR. M for grown-up themes.





	Doghouse

"So, are we going to talk about it?"

"There's nothing to talk about."

"Well, you kind of fucked Jet."

"So did you."

Then silence. It was neither comfortable nor tense. Their eyes tore away from each other to stare at nothing in particular. Katara shuffled her feet and folded her arms, the moonlight dappling her face through the trees on the cliffside. The temple was unsettlingly quiet with the others asleep.

"You... don't regret that he's dead, seeing as it's your fault?"

Zuko sighed.

"I didn't want him to die. But he didn't want a better life. He would not play by the rules, so the Dai Li played him. I did want a better life. There was a time when I thought I could have a different future. He was stuck in the past."

Katara chuckled dryly. "He was like that when I knew him, too.” The thought of Zuko slinging tea in an imaginary timeline made her stomach turn. “Did you know he tried to flood a Fire Nation colony, just for fun?"

His eyes widened at first, then his lips puckered. "That certainly sounds like him. He had these two friends. They cared about him a lot. Just wanted him to change. But, he was relentless." He breathed in meditatively. "The sick part is...I was kind of attracted to that?"

She laughed. "Honestly?" He looked away again, embarrassed, shifting his feet to get up.

Katara continued, "Part of me...liked that about him too."

"The part that likes stealing from pirates?" His mouth was a straight line but there was a twinkle of humor in his voice.

She clucked her tongue. "The part that liked being tied up."

Zuko let out his breath through pursed lips, low and slow, almost a whistle.

"You should really watch that mouth of yours, you don't know where it'll take you.” She stared at him through lidded eyes, unafraid. A half-smile cracked his stolid facade. “That's something he said to me when we met."

She watched him with a side-eye. "How did it start?"

"We met on a boat for refugees to Ba Sing Se. He wanted my help stealing food. One thing led to another." He was coy.

She was blunt. "Were you on top or bottom?"

He scoffed. "I don't know what difference it makes to you. It's not like we had time or room to experiment. It’s not like I'm a _slut_."

She gasped. The word felt like acid. "You're saying _I'm_ a slut?"

"Only you would know.” He sighed into the heat of her stare. “Either way, he made me feel like I couldn’t help myself. He was magnetic. And volatile, and dangerous."

She watched him carefully. "He was my first."

"Mine, too."

Her brows furrowed. “What about Mai?”

His words were measured. “What about her?”

“You never had sex with her?” She was a little lost on the timeline.

His lips turned into a sneer. He ignored the questions she left unasked. “If you can’t tell, she’s kind of frigid.”

Katara’s anger was rekindled. “So you broke up with her for not putting out,” she accused.

Zuko’s eyebrow twitched. “No. Clearly I am here to teach Aang.”

She spat back, “But if you cared about her, you would have explained what happened to her.”

He balked, “She would throw me to the lion-vultures first. I don’t care that she saved us at Boiling Rock. She has no allegiance to anyone but herself.”

“But she saved your ass,” Katara rebutted.

“You don't know her. She was standing up for _herself_ after a lifetime of obeying my sister.”

“It’s clear as day she still loves you. Why did you even start anything with her, knowing how she felt?” If the venom in her voice stung him, Zuko refused to show it.

“She liked me and I tried to like her back. She made it difficult.”

“Because she was _frigid_, like you said. She wouldn’t fuck, so you didn’t want to work it out.”

Sour smugness clung to her words. The sconce on the wall lit up brightly behind her. Katara jumped forward in response to the heat.

“Because she didn’t like me for me. She thought it was normal for couples to fight all the time. She wasn’t even what I wanted." His eyes turned soft and she hated him for it. "I left part of myself in Ba Sing Se.”

“Because you wanted dick.”

“I’m not gay.” His voice was earnest. Katara looked disarmed.

“How...how can you know.”

“Because I like both.”

Katara laughed mockingly, moving to stand within an arm's distance of him. She seemed to tower over Zuko despite her being so much smaller than him.

“I can’t imagine you caring for anyone.”

The moon lit his alabaster skin a bright white, while the warmth of the sconces on the wall behind them flickered in his golden eyes. She couldn’t tear away from his gaze.

“You can’t, because you barely know me. You thought you knew me in Ba Sing Se?”

Her breath hitched in her throat. She leaned in threateningly, “Don’t go there.”

“You looked at my scar and thought that I was a fixer-upper, like your friends.” Her eyes squinted, her mouth fell ajar, but he continued. “You thought if you could clear my face of my burden, then we could be a happy little family?”

Her right hand fisted on the column above Zuko’s head. Her words came out as a whisper, “Shut _up_.”

“I came eventually, didn’t I? I’m playing house like you wanted.”

She fisted Zuko’s tunic in her left hand, pushing him back slightly on the ledge. The cool air blew his hair loosely, inky against the moon.

His face remained unmoved. “I wash the dishes with you. I help scrub out the clothes. I help prepare the food. I don’t see anyone else stepping up to help out _mom _with chores.”

“I said, shut up.” She lifted him slightly up off the ledge, standing between his legs.

He shrugged. “If you never challenge them, they will never grow up.” Their faces were inches apart.

“We were doing fine without you.”

He moved his hands from gripping the ornate ledge to gripping the top of her hips. He smiled when she sucked in her breath.

“But you’re doing better with--,” he pulled her body into his, “--me.”

She failed to choke down the moan that escaped her. “I don’t need you here.”

He quirked an eyebrow playfully. “You don’t think the kids need a father figure?”

Her hand loosened on his tunic. Katara’s fingers grazed over his clavicle, feeling how his rapid heart betrayed his cool facade.

“It’s...nice having a hand.” Following her cue, his hands trailed up her sides, fingers poking under the slits of her tunic to touch her bare skin.

His voice was husky. “I’m tired of sleeping on the couch.” He seemed to caress each rib before he skimmed the underneath of her breasts through her clothes. She raised her leg to rest her knee on the ledge to the left of him, hovering her heat over the obvious tent in his pants.

“I’ll let you know when you’re out of the doghouse.”

Footfalls echoed around the corner. In the blink of an eye, Katara was down the hall, a shadow in a shadow. Zuko went in the opposite direction, lamenting the long way back to his room as well as the torture of talking to whoever was lurking in the hallways.

Suki smiled when she came into the light. “You guys couldn’t sleep either?” She nodded in Katara's direction, though she was already out of sight.

“Yeah, we we’re just having a talk.”

“I’m sorry.” When his face quirked in confusion, Suki explained, “I’m not sure why she’s giving you such a hard time.”

“It’s kind of complicated.”

“I hope you guys can kiss and make up soon.” Suki winked, making Zuko blush for the first time that night. “It always helps when Sokka and I have an argument.”

He sighed, tilted his head, and smiled widely at her as she walked away. “I sure wish we were that normal.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! It's my first time in my 13 years of writing fanfic to ever post. Let me know what you think, if the mood strikes you.


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